An Emboldened Warrior

Josh
Barnett has designs on a second UFC title reign. | Photo: Dave
Mandel/Sherdog.com

If Josh
Barnett seems a little angry, well, it’s probably because he
is.

Despite winning 10 of his last 11 fights while using a nice balance
of four knockouts and five submissions, the 36-year-old MMA veteran
still battles for respect at nearly every turn. After compiling a
32-6 record and winning titles all across the globe, he returned to
the
Ultimate Fighting Championship in August for a matchup with
Frank
Mir. Once thought of as a dream heavyweight bout featuring two
of the best ground fighters on the planet, Barnett claims it always
bothered him when Mir was ranked higher while he was off fighting
in Japan for the
Pride Fighting Championships organization.

Set to finally meet in the Octagon, his opponent offered few
compliments for Barnett’s accomplishments.

“He’s going to go out there and lose by how he usually wins,” Mir
said prior to UFC 164. “Over a 10-year span, the guy hasn’t
improved.”

Never one to shy away from a challenge -- on the mat, inside the
cage or in front of a microphone -- Barnett retorted: “If he thinks
I haven’t grown or changed in 10 years, there’s a lot he doesn’t
understand. It’s always nice having a weapon that nobody is ready
for.”

That weapon came in the form of his fists and knees. However, even
with the impressive technical knockout, Barnett was cheated out of
his full moment of glory, as Mir complained the fight was stopped
too early. Yet, at the post-fight press conference, UFC President
Dana White was quick to point out that “Josh Barnett
was 100 percent winning that fight.”

Even so, before Barnett’s hand was raised in victory that night,
another slight of sorts took place on the undercard. After fellow
heavyweight Ben Rothwell
knocked out Brandon
Vera, he was asked who he would like to fight next. Rather than
call out the winner of the Mir-Barnett fight, Rothwell stated he
wanted rising star Travis
Browne. Matchmaker Joe Silva and the company’s brass saw things
differently. Coming off Barnett’s victorious return to the UFC
following a decade-long absence, he would be the one to get a crack
at Browne first. Scheduled for UFC
168 on Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, the
bout has a familiar theme of many recent high-profile fights the
company has put on, as the new-guard representative meets an
old-school combatant.

While some may occasionally confuse Barnett’s comments as nothing
more than hype derived from his love for professional wrestling, he
is actually a warrior all the way through to the core of his
soul.

“There’s still great, true fighters coming out of this [sport],” he
said, “but these guys aren’t quite as tough as they used to be.
They’re way better athletes [and] they’re much better prepared, but
some of these guys, they don’t have that grit.”

Separated in age by only five years, a far greater divide exists
when it comes to experience between Barnett and his upcoming
opponent. Browne made his professional MMA debut on Feb. 7, 2009 in
Tijuana, Mexico. Two weeks prior, Barnett had secured his 27th win
with a third-round technical knockout over Gilbert
Yvel.

“I fought when you couldn’t even buy MMA gear at your local sports
store or whatever. We had to make it ourselves. I fought when most
of the time we didn’t even wear gloves. We were under attack from
all angles,” Barnett said. “There wasn’t much fame. The only real
reason to do it was because you just had a never-ending desire to
get in there and bathe in blood.”

Photo:
Zhanna Popova/Sherdog.com

Browne owns 11 first-round finishes.

Fast forward to 2010, when Browne entered the UFC with a perfect
9-0 record. He has gone 6-1-1 since, and after knocking out former
Strikeforce
champion Alistair
Overeem a few months ago, some consider Browne to be a
legitimate threat to champion Cain
Velasquez’s UFC title. Naturally, Barnett has other ideas. In
fact, he has made it perfectly clear that he returned to the UFC
for one reason: to reclaim the belt he never lost. It is an
attitude White appreciates.

“That should be the only reason anybody signs here,” he said. “I
don’t want guys who sign the contract to come into the UFC because
they want to be on TV or whatever it is. The only reason you should
ever come to the UFC and sign here is because you want to be a
world champion and believe you can be here.”

Upon hearing those remarks, Barnett tweeted: “They aren’t hopes,
they’re facts. It will be mine again.” The last word in that
statement is one of the key pieces to the story.

In March 2002, Barnett knocked out future hall of famer Randy
Couture to become the youngest-ever UFC heavyweight champion.
His reign at the top was short lived, though, as he tested positive
for the drug Boldenone, a veterinary steroid, and was banned by the
Nevada Athletic Commission. His road back to the UFC was a long
one, seeing him largely compete in Japan, where fighters were not
tested for performance-enhancing drugs. Subsequent issues with test
results in California in 2009 cast a dark cloud over his career for
many years.

Recently, the commission moved to make history of a different
variety. Barnett is the first MMA fighter required to undergo
random, certified drug testing in order to receive a license to
compete. The conditions are strict, too. He is open to random
testing through Dec. 31, 2014. He agreed to go through with it, in
part, because he knows what is at stake. At least one group is in
his corner, as the UFC has agreed to pay for the additional
testing, which is expected to cost in excess of $20,000. Barnett
now looks to change the story from what has taken place away from
the Octagon to what he is capable of doing inside of it.

“The first time around, I went all the way to the top and won the
heavyweight championship of the world,” he said. “I don’t expect
any different [this time around], other than to get, probably, paid
a lot more money and get a lot more stardom and fandom out of this
whole thing because of the explosion of MMA as a whole, probably a
lot more Twitter followers, too.”

At first, White hedged a bit when asked if the winner of the
Barnett-Browne matchup will be granted a title shot in 2014.

“We’ll see,” he said, acknowledging that there were many other
moving pieces.

Velasquez is out of action until the latter half of 2014 after
undergoing shoulder surgery. The man currently viewed as the number
one contender, Fabricio
Werdum, has gone on record as saying he is content to wait on
the sidelines until the champion returns. More recently, rumblings
from the UFC offices in Las Vegas suggest the winner of this fight
will meet Werdum to decide the identity of the true number one
contender. Then there are comments out of Brazil from former
champion Junior dos
Santos, claiming he thinks he deserves the Barnett-Browne
winner.

“

I fought when most of the time
we didn’t even wear gloves. We
were under attack from all angles.
There wasn’t much fame. The only
real reason to do it was because
you just had a never-ending desire
to get in there and bathe in blood.

”

-- Josh Barnett, former UFC
champion

How will it all shake out? As always, it largely
depends on the performance of the two fighters inside the octagon.
A spectacular win by Barnett or Browne could lead to a swelling of
support for their names to be included in any talk of a top
contender’s fight next. The throwback warrior that he is, Barnett
wants nothing more than a clear, concise winner. His brain is not
wired to revel in merely getting his hand raised.